Highlighting the obtuse, the slanted and sometimes just plain ignorant writings found in The Gray Lady

International Politics

We should have known it was fishy when the US gave Russia advance notice that we were going to bomb Al Shayrat Airfield in Syria.

Since when do you give the ENEMY advance notice they are going to be bombed!?

Now, the proof is in: Less than 24 hours after Trump’s “triumphant” Syrian strike the airbase is up and running and fighter jets are flying off the runways and hitting innocent Syrian civilians.

Reminds us of that episode from Joseph Heller’s classic WWII novel “Catch 22” where the US Air Force makes an agreement to bomb their own airbase.

Why?

It was a good business decision.

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Now, Trump can pretend he took a stand. The Russians can pretend outrage over an action that did no material damage.

The US media can fawn all over Trump as being more “presidential” than Obama who was the Syrian “wimp” while the Democrats can whine and pontificate about why they weren’t consulted about such “war” actions when actually they’ve got no alternatives, meanwhile they’re crying rivers over Assad’s repeated gas attacks.

Later, when taken to task over this egregious lack of acknowledgment of all the Jews killed, Trump and his administration refused to make any apologies, instead, insisting more than ever they purposely choose not to mention Jews.

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This is merely the beginning. Trump’s chief man in The White House Steve Bannon has determinedly attacked Jews for years in his media business and espoused anti-Jewish attitudes in his racist rants.

During Trump’s campaign events many supporters showed racist, white-power signs. These were never denounced by Trump.

The joke here is that Trump constantly rants about supporting the state of Israel.

It’s a smokescreen.

Trump’s faithful supporters and his foremost advisor, Steve Bannon, are racists of the first order.

1. ESPN is owned by The Walt Disney Company, a corporation that rakes in $52 Billion dollars every year and is only interested in making many more billions of dollars.

2. ESPN makes a habit of promoting the most powerful sports’ interests.

The latest example would be their blatant Duke/Louisville basketball commercials where they make a hero out of Duke’s creepy, cheating Grayson Allen. Does it matter to ESPN that Allen has been repeatedly kicking hitting opponents and is despised by most Americans who value sportsmanship?

No. ESPN wants to make this creep a hero.

3. The number one mantra of every good American should be: “Question Authority.” ESPN will never question authority because they are invested in the status quo.

See a bad call on the football field or on the ball court? ESPN announcers rarely question referees’ or officials’ calls. Questioning authority upsets the status quo. Even though all of America sees what is unfair, ESPN people are blind.

4. ESPN lies by omission.

Before Alabama woefully lost to Clemson in the national championship game, ESPN already crowned Alabama the champ, reporting countless stories and video feeds promoting the invulnerability of the Alabama football team.

Whoops!

Then after Clemson kicked Alabama’s butt in the championship game ESPN practically ignored the results and ignored Clemson’s victory.

Why?

Because ESPN owns the SEC Network where Alabama plays. It is in ESPN’s financial interest to promote Alabama.

Clemson? ESPN won’t make money off Clemson. So they ignore them.

Everyone’s up on fake news. How about “fake non-news?”

5. These “Takeaway” things are just plain silly so make up your own for this last one…

PS: Dan Dakich and Kirk Herbstreit are the 2 exceptions at ESPN: They are both very good at what they do.

When the US Ambassador to the UN’s car callously murders a small boy on a trip to Africa you’d think it would be news.

For New York Times writers it’s just an excuse to glorify their own life stories, not unlike callous teenagers who, when faced with monstrous world events, turn obsessively to ruminate on how everything effects them.

NYT’s writer Helene Cooper in today’s Times uses the pronoun “I” so many times in an article about an African boy’s murder by UN Ambassador Samantha Powers motorcade that you’d think she was the one that was hit, bounced in the air and then ignored by Americans on a supposed “mercy” trip to Africa.

“I, I, I, I, I, I” and on, and on, and on.

Writer Cooper supposedly uses the first person to express outrage at the boy’s murder.

But in the end, the article is nothing more than the glorification of the writer, elevating herself above the story, elevating her “feelings” of outrage, turning journalism into nothing more than a Facebook post by an over-emotional adolescent teenager.

Making the story not about the horrific death of a 6 year old African boy, but instead all about the feelings of a privileged New York Times writer.

It was a mere 15 years ago that another Republican president gave his personal appraisal of Russian dictator Vlad Putin: George W. said he looked into Vlad’s eyes and saw his soul and saw that it was good. That Vlad The Impaler was, for the record: “trustworthy.”

“George, George, George.” Or so his father, H.W. was constantly heard to mutter.

Now we have The Great Imposter Trump glowingly declaring Putin is “very smart.”

Well, compared to GI Trump, we must agree. On the intelligence meter Putin wins hands down against ol’ cotton brains.

First, Putin is a leader who has built his empire on top of his state’s extensive intelligence bureaus. Heck, Putin was brought up as an intelligence agent in the old KGB. When it comes to subterfuge and the effective use of intelligence in the exercise of power Putin is unrivaled in modern history.

GI Trump? He is so scared of the US intelligence agencies that he’s refused to meet with them. He has gone on record repeatedly refuting the authenticity of the intelligence agencies.

Intelligence! Shmelligence!

Can you see Vlad Putin in Moscow licking his lips at what a sucker he’s going to be dealing with?

He’s like LeBron James knowing he’s going 1-on-1 against a pimply-faced middle-schooler.

Game over!

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Vladimir Putin is a master.

He supplied a guided missile that shot down Malaysia Air Flight 17 in the Ukraine killing almost 300 civilians. And nothing happened.

He kills his personal and political enemies using hitmen. And nothing happens.

He controls the media in Russia, controls the economy, controls politics, when he wants to stay in power he changes the rules for term limits.

And now, when he wants to control an American president, he plays him like a puddin’head fiddle.

And the Great Imposter, Trump, trumpets out tweets that are music to a dictator’s ears.

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No. There is no precedence.

An American head of state has never sold the soul of this Republic to a dictator. Especially one as corrupt and murderous and dangerous to the world order as Putin.

Yes. Donald Trump talked with the democratically elected president of Taiwan.

Why shouldn’t he. Why the hell should the most powerful nation in the world let Communist China tell it who it can and cannot talk to? THAT is the question.

The national media – including The New York Times – is equating Trump’s conversation with Taiwan’s president as if it were an act of war with China. It’s not.

It’s called Freedom of Speech.

Why can’t the US president speak with Taiwan’s president? Oh. It’s that Jimmy Carter agreement way back when that essentially…well, what DID we gain from letting Communist China become a massive pain in the arse to the world as a whole? What DID we gain by recognizing Communist China and throwing small, independent, democratic Taiwan under the bus?

Well, we threw away our principles, for one thing.

Why would we abandon Taiwan, a country that has come to more closely resemble the democratic, free-thinking values of the United States? Why would we instead allow Communist China free access to all our markets so that it could take unfair trade advantage and fundamentally alter the American economy so that it will NEVER be the same? So that China’s unfair trade advantage has allowed it not only to steal jobs from Americans but to amass trillions of dollars that it has used and is currently using to purchase American corporations and manufacturing sites and tracts of real estate so that America’s resources have essentially been transferred wholesale across the Pacific to Chinese control?

Why does everyone screaming in the press seem to think that Communist China can dictate who the American president can talk to on the telephone?

Oh. It’s all the same people who were so blindered for years with outdated values that they thought putting Hillary Clinton up for president was going to be a great move forward for this country.

Uh, huh.

Once you let a bully start dictating what you can do, that bully controls you.

It’s time to stop the mindset that Communist China sets policy for the world. It’s time that the United States starts setting an example by showing leadership.

[This is in no way an endorsement for Donald Trump. It is an endorsement for a change in foreign policy.]

For years The New York Times has kneeled down before the powers of Communist Mainland China and refused to acknowledge in print that the free island nation Taiwan, the Republic of China, is a sovereign nation independent from the corrupt, criminal communist mainland China.

That, apparently, has changed.

In an opinion piece published in The Times on Saturday, 26 November 2016, the editorial writers clearly stated:

“Taiwan should become another nation to recognize that love is love, regardless of sexual orientation.”

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The definition of nation clearly states that it is “independent” and a “sovereign state.”

Never before has The New York Times ever admitted that Taiwan was anything other than a renegade province of the communist mainland China. This is the Party line that Mainland China has forced upon news corporations and businesses and even the United Nations in its attempts to isolate the democratic nation of Taiwan.

Communist China has used its police powers and its power over who is allowed to do business in the country to keep countries and corporations bowing down to them for decades and most countries and corporations have willingly taken the boot of the communists and shined it clean for the sake of their own profits.

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We congratulate The New York Times for their brave, courageous stance, knowing they alone are standing against a tidal wave of forced economic censorship and the military brutality that Communist China threatens Taiwan with every day.

(Then again, we’re probably pretty sure it’s the really inexperienced punk writers that The Times has recently hired that made this massive error. And NYT’s publisher A.O. Sulzberger, Jr. will soon be called onto the carpet and forced to kowtow to the Communist bullies from the mainland so he will be able to keep doing business over there.)